Dial File — Steve Bornfeld: Roger, Houston: TV has landed

Friday, July 16, 1999 | 9:47 a.m.

Steve Bornfeld is the Sun features editor. His television column appears Fridays. Reach him at 259-4081 or steveb@vegas.com

Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars.

And so we did.

Or, in more historic terms: One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind. One jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring, shock-inducing, logic-defying, medium-maturing lunge for TV.

(OK, so I don't share Neil Armstrong's gift for brevity.)

Our Grand Adventure climaxed on July 20, 1969 -- Tuesday marks the 30th anniversary -- when Armstrong uttered the first two phrases. TV embraced the third. And lunar lunacy engulfed the big, beautiful blue ball below.

With its grainy, ghostly, black-and-white images suffused with an almost supernatural sheen -- an out-of-this-world show on an otherworldly stage -- it was this viewer's top TV thrill and the only one that words fail to fully describe. (But Walter Cronkite's -- "There's a foot on the moon! Oh, boy! Hot diggity dog!" -- still capture the gee-whiz! wonder of it all quite well.)

It was also one huge -- and hugely influential -- TV show. (Imagine announcer Don Pardo, in his best "Saturday Night Live" basso profundo, bellowing: "LIVE from the Moon -- It's Mankind's Greatest Achievement!") What amounted to "Space: The Series" set the standard for two enduring tube traditions: The miniseries and news as stage-managed theatrics.

News and entertainment found mutual inspiration among the stars.

Television historians tell us that "QB VII" was the first miniseries, "Winds of War"/"War of Remembrance" comprised the longest and "Roots" was the best. Wrong: Each honor belongs to the 1961-'69 joy ride to the moon (ironically inspiring its own miniseries, HBO's "From the Earth to the Moon").

With its dramatic plot twists in tension-building order -- Alan Shepard's 15-minute ride, John Glenn's orbits, Scott Carpenter's missing capsule, the space walks, the fatal Apollo I fire, the Yuletide slingshot around the moon and the Eagle's landing -- "Space: The Series" drew viewers in droves for each installment, even if months and years apart. Grand themes with climactic finales are irresistible draws. It took a news event to create an entertainment staple: the miniseries.

But climactic episodes don't wear well in reruns. Subsequent moon landings lessened the original's impact -- like watching Richard Kimble wrestle the one-armed man or Kristen plug J.R. or Hawkeye split from Korea over and over again. Entertainment value vanished -- but left a dark blot on the news biz that bore it.

Unlike breathless breaking news, coverage of "Space: The Series" was carefully calculated, its every installment expected and planned for months in advance. When the Eagle landed, the nets were ready: ABC commissioned Duke Ellington to write original moon music; NBC turned its cameras toward James Earl Jones and Rod McKuen -- reading poetry.

The networks got better and faster at theatrical touches that blossomed into full-scale productions. Today, even breaking news events carry their own theme music, melodramatic titles -- "Bloodshed in Kosovo," "A White House in Crisis" -- and flashy graphics.

News as entertainment.

But no bells-and-whistles could ever top the simple sight of that lone, blurry white figure descending onto that bleak, gray-black world.

It was one giant leap for our souls.